


Splash

by BeepGrandCherokeeper



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe, Explicit Sexual Content, Falling In Love, M/M, Magic, Near Death Experiences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:14:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27063982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeepGrandCherokeeper/pseuds/BeepGrandCherokeeper
Summary: Hank must have shut his eyes. When he opened them again, something loomed in front of him, shapeless and unknowable in the black. It should have scared him, but instead, he only looked, thinking without words that he had a few more seconds before he would have to gasp for air and the water would fill his lungs. He’d played with his gun enough times to know what it was like, coming close to death, but this was so far outside his control that it was impossible to know how to feel. Mostly, he was numb, but that might have been the cold.Whatever had him in its grip came closer, and closer, and Hank couldn’t take it anymore. He opened his mouth.The figure was a man.
Relationships: Hank Anderson/Connor
Comments: 19
Kudos: 89





	Splash

**Author's Note:**

> Wowwww hard to believe it's finally here! This piece was written for the Hankcon MerMay anthology of 2020, Deep, and the moratorium on posting was lifted TODAY! When I sat down to write this it had been a while since I had written Hankcon, not because I loved it any less but because writing is hard, and this was still in the first flush of the pandemic. In the end though it was incredibly nice to come home to a ship I love, and also watching Splash (1984) 100 times wasn't exactly a hardship for me. I hope you enjoy, and PLEASE check out the [MerMay anthology](https://twitter.com/HankConMerms) on twitter! We still have some goodies available, and the other artists and writers worked so hard.

Hank never intended to drown.

He’d been drinking, yes, and he had a folded, worn-out copy of Cole’s last picture in his pocket. That and his history of behavior would be enough to lead any decent coroner to decide he’d come out here to kill himself. It _was_ an accident, though, a stupid one — he’d had half a bottle of whiskey, smuggled out on the lake in his coat pocket, and he’d been staring at the stars when something moved in the corner of his eye. A big fish just under the surface, maybe, or a bobbing piece of garbage, and his traitorous, piece of shit, broken brain came up with the idea: _stand up, and you’ll see it better._

He’d overbalanced. He fell.

His limbs were too heavy to get him back to the surface, and his coat was waterlogged, and he couldn’t coordinate himself well enough to shrug it off. The bottle slipped from his fingers, spilled Black Lamb barely visible in the dark water before it dissipated. Hank couldn’t tell which way was up, couldn’t tell if he was sinking like a stone or just bobbing in place. _Stupid_ , he thought, over and over, feeling his lungs burn as he tried to hold his breath. _Stupid_.

Something grabbed his hand. His first instinct was to pull away, but he couldn’t move quick enough, and whatever it was latched on harder. Maybe he’d been tangled in some seaweed or something, he thought, but there were five points of pressure like firm fingers.

He must have shut his eyes. When he opened them again, something loomed in front of him, shapeless and unknowable in the black. It should have scared him, but instead, he only looked, thinking without words that he had a few more seconds before he would have to gasp for air and the water would fill his lungs. He’d played with his gun enough times to know what it was like, coming close to death, but this was so far outside his control that it was impossible to know how to feel. Mostly, he was numb, but that might have been the cold.

Whatever had him in its grip came closer, and closer, and Hank couldn’t take it anymore. He opened his mouth.

The figure was a man.

Hank caught a glimpse of him just before the stranger came too close to be seen—he had speckled skin, warm brown eyes, and long, elegant fingers that snaked past Hank’s jaw and fastened around the back of his neck. Then something warm pressed to Hank’s lips, creating a seal, and Hank’s chest expanded until he thought his bones would creak.

Air. The man was breathing into his mouth, like a human aqua lung, and Hank didn’t know how that was supposed to work but it seemed to be saving his life. He grunted, bubbles flying out of his nostrils and in front of his eyes, some of them clinging to the strange man’s cheeks. The air traveled up, and he couldn’t be sure, but he thought they were moving, too. It was hard to focus on anything but the lips against his, the fingers tangled at the nape of his neck and a hand still in his, like an anchor.

When they punched through the churning surface of the lake, Hank inhaled so deeply that his vision went spotty, almost sinking back beneath the surface. Strong arms looped under his, and the man said something to him.

“I don’t—” Hank tried to say, but water splashed up into his mouth and he hacked.

He—fainted, or something. The next thing he knew, he was laying face down on the beach, coughing up brine while something beat against his back with hard, repetitive smacks.

“Okay,” Hank sputtered, wiping the back of his mouth with a wet sleeve covered in sand. “Fuck, okay, I’m all—I’m all right.”

Still coughing, he tried to wriggle his way to a seated position, but the hand on his back turned into an insistent pressure. Struggling didn’t help, since his rescuer was apparently shockingly strong, so instead he turned his head and squinted, trying to make out the man kneeling on the beach next to him.

“Oh,” he said, unable to help himself. “You’re. Did you… lose your trunks?”

The man was apparently naked. Hank wondered if there was a pile of clothes on the beach somewhere, if he had stripped down to go after Hank. Seemed a bit extreme, but then, he’d never rescued someone from drowning before.

Clearing his throat, Hank tried to say thank you, or anything else, but the man jumped to his feet and peered into the distance. His brown eyes narrowed, mouth turned down into something almost like a pout—and wow, yes, he was very naked. Hank quickly averted his gaze and turned over, falling into the sand with another startled cough.

Then, without another word, the man turned and started to run.

Hank didn’t even have time to yell after him, staring with an open mouth as the man charged down the beach and toward the waves. He ran like a gazelle, graceful and long-legged, and just as abruptly as he’d come into Hank’s life he was gone again, swallowed by the spray and disappeared into the black water.

“Fuck,” Hank said aloud, dragging a hand down his face and leaving grains of sand behind.

_Fuck_.

* * *

The next day at the boat rental dock, Hank pretended there were gaps in his memory. He had to admit he’d been drinking, which meant risking legal trouble, but he knew he could smooth things over well enough. The trouble was that the boat needed to be retrieved. When the owner demanded he pay a fine, he checked all of his pockets only to realize that he must have lost his wallet in the water. It took a call to the station back home and a half hour to re-download a banking app to his phone on a shitty connection before the owner was satisfied and he could leave, thinking ruefully of all the work he’d have to do in Detroit to replace his cards.

“Last time I listen to Jeff and take a vacation,” he grumbled to himself, thrusting his hands deep into his sandy coat pockets. Thankfully, he still had his keys—and the photo of Cole, though it was a little worse for the wear. He could get a new copy printed, but this one… well. It was good he hadn’t lost it, too.

Throwing himself into the car and slamming the door shut, Hank rested his hands on the steering wheel and took a moment to think of the man in the water. Maybe he’d just been drunker than he thought. The man had been like something out of a dream, anyway, prettier than anybody Hank had ever seen in real life.

He pointedly steered his thoughts away from the man’s ass cheeks practically glowing in the moonlight, pretending his own face didn’t feel hot. It would take several hours to get home, even with a lead foot, and he needed to keep his mind on the road. Or, at least, on anything that wasn’t a handsome, naked man dragging him onto the beach single-handedly. The guy was gone, and at least Hank was alive and had his own big fish story to entertain people with when he got back.

People, he thought with a snort, turning the key in the ignition. He wasn’t going to tell a soul.

* * *

He sobered up some, after that. It was impossible to completely stay away from alcohol, which he’d expected, but he no longer spent every night nursing a bottle of whiskey. When he did drink, he thought of brown eyes in the gloom and soft lips crushed against his… and he didn’t like the memory. As days turned into weeks, Hank began to suspect he might have hallucinated the whole thing, or dreamed it. Naked men didn’t just roam the beach looking for washed up old fucks to save from their own poor choices.

“Besides,” he said to Sumo one night, running his thumb through the condensation on a sweating glass bottle of soda, “nobody’s that pretty.”

Sumo lifted his head and huffed like he understood and agreed, thumping his tail against the floor.

Hank told no one about what he might have seen that night. Not even Jeff, who asked him pointedly why he’d come back early from what was basically mandatory leave. It was what he’d planned, to keep quiet, so nobody thought he’d gone insane or talked to him in soft voices about considering rehab.

That was why the call came as a surprise.

His phone buzzed on one of his off days, sometime after the evening news. Hank spared it a glance before he went back to the beer he’d just cracked open, his first in two days — he was counting the hours, a little, but he couldn’t help that now. Halfway into the can, his phone buzzed again. He sighed, set the drink aside, and checked to see who thought they could bother him on his limited free time now that he was behaving a bit better and actually showing up to work.

Of course, it was Jeff.

“Hey,” he said, putting the phone to his ear. “Something up?”

Jeff made a sound like a strangled chuckle. “Yeah, you could say that. You been keeping secrets from me, Hank?”

Hank went through the catalog of all the shit he’d done lately: late mornings, sometimes, though not as many as he used to get away with; some terse conversations with Gavin heavily lined with the implication that he should leave Hank alone. Nothing worth mentioning.

He was silent too long, apparently, because Jeff sighed and clarified, “You could have told me you’d found yourself a boyfriend.”

Hank laughed that time, a shocked outburst that came out too high and a bit insincere. “You know I haven’t dated anyone since—in a while.”

Jeff ignored his slip, thankfully, but Hank heard Jeff’s office chair squeak as he settled back into it with a weary sigh. “What else am I supposed to think, some guy comes marching in with your wallet and insists on seeing you? You said you lost it.”

“I did. In the lake.”

Jeff hesitated before he asked his next question, voice close as if he was speaking right over Hank’s shoulder. “Did you hire him?”

Hank pulled the phone from his ear and gave it a dirty look, as if anybody could see him. “Fuck, no, Jeffrey! We both know that’s fuckin’ illegal.”

“That doesn’t stop you from doing other shit,” Jeff said, but he sounded relieved. “He’s still asking for you. Sure you don’t know him?”

Hank’s stomach turned over, like a pancake flipping in the air. He thought of those brown eyes again. “Can you describe him to me?”

“About six foot, brown hair, brown eyes, probably thirty.”

Jeff went on, but Hank no longer heard him. Those were all the details he needed. With a quick promise that he’d be right there, Hank whirled around his living room looking for his shoes and his car keys, shoving his phone into the pocket of his sweatpants. On his way out the door, he eyed the half-gone beer a little guiltily, but he’d done worse more than once. This would be the very last time.

He promised Sumo, “I’ll be back,” and he flew out the door, barely remembering to lock it behind him.

Halfway there, he wondered what he was doing. Why he was flying across town, in a ratty old t-shirt and sweats, to see a man he might have imagined—someone who might not be the same man at all. He didn’t do things like this anymore. His heart hadn’t beat faster at the thought of another person since long before his wife left him, and it was incredibly foolish to treat this like some sort of strange coincidence. Some sort of… fairy tale.

Even as he gave himself this talk, though, he hoped. It would be nice, at least, to know he wasn’t crazy.

He got more than a few looks from other people inside the precinct, coming in looking exactly as if he’d spent the day bumming around his house. Chris met him at the employee access gate, a smile lingering at the corner of his mouth like he wasn’t quite ready to let it show.

“Hi, Lieutenant,” he said, seamlessly taking the lead as he showed Hank toward the back. “Captain called you, huh?”

“Yeah,” Hank said, taking a quick look around the room. No one there matched the stranger’s description, although there were plenty of men with brown hair and dark eyes. He felt his hopes sink a little.

“Guy doesn’t seem to speak English very well,” Chris went on. He was taking them toward the interrogation rooms. “He said your name, though, and he’s got your ID. They brought him in on public indecency charges, but… I don’t know. He’s confused, I think. Maybe he got hit in the head.”

“Maybe he’s had too much to drink.”

Chris shook his head. “He passed the breathalyzer fine. We just put him in here to calm him down.”

He put his palm on the scanner to unlock the door before Hank could protest, before he could get his thoughts together. As it was, he hesitated before following Chris inside. He couldn’t say what was waiting for him, and he didn’t care for how sweaty his palms felt from the wondering.

“We found him,” Chris said pleasantly, stepping out of Hank’s way.

A young man sat at the interrogation table, uncuffed, prim and straight-backed with his hands on his knees. He was wearing clothes that clearly didn’t belong to him, a pair of gym shorts tied around his slim waist and a too-tight shirt like he’d just come from jogging. Brown hair curled over his forehead, pale skin showed off a constellation of moles and freckles like an inverted picture of the night sky, and his eyes—his eyes were brown, dark and deep like the water. They lit up when he saw Hank, filling with a warmth that punched the air out of Hank’s chest.

“Hank Anderson,” he said, and his voice surprised Hank so thoroughly that he needed a second to reconcile it with that sweet face. The man rasped as if he hadn’t spoken in years, but his register was high and soft, a mess of contradictions that came across as something charming.

“Fuck,” Hank breathed. “It is you.”

Hank meant to say something else, to ask where he’d gone that night or why he’d turned up here just to bring Hank back his wallet, but he didn’t get the chance. The man stood, a painfully sincere smile spreading across his face. He insinuated himself in Hank’s space so quickly that Hank had nothing to do about it, no time to prepare for the mouth on his in an inexpert kiss or the arms flung around his neck. 

It didn’t last long. Hank put up his hands to the man’s shoulders and disengaged, carefully, blinking at the man’s expression the way he blinked when he looked into the sun. It was just as blinding and bright, and incredibly more confusing.

“Oh,” Chris said, reminding Hank that he was in fact still there. “So you do know him.”

“I—”

“Found him,” the man said, still looking right at Hank. His hand snaked its way into Hank’s beard, and Hank couldn’t stop him. “Hank Anderson.”

“Yeah,” Hank replied. They were so close, he was practically speaking right into his rescuer’s mouth. He licked his dry lips, wishing his mouth felt less like a desert. “That’s me.”

* * *

Hank brought the man home. He had nothing else to do with him, and couldn’t stomach the thought of putting him in a hotel room. For all he knew, the poor guy would leave and try to track him down again, and he couldn’t stand the idea of him getting lost in the city. Besides, Hank thought, stealing a sideways peek at where he sat in the passenger’s seat, hands resting on his knees again, he still didn’t have any real clothes.

He talked, a little. English obviously wasn’t his first language but he seemed to understand more than he could say. When Hank asked where he’d come from, he frowned in thought and said, “Another place.”

“Sure,” Hank grumbled, checking his blind spot. “I think I’ve got a cousin from there.”

When they pulled into the driveway, Hank meant to climb out of the front seat, but he found he couldn’t move. He sat there, gripping the steering wheel and staring at the garage door while the man shifted to press his face up against the window.

“You live here?” he asked, in his funny sort of way.

“I guess,” Hank said. He took a deep, heavy breath, and then undid his seatbelt and popped open the door. “Come on, kid, let’s… let’s go inside.”

He had to open the passenger side door for the man, too, like he was bringing a date home and trying to be gentlemanly. It didn’t help that his surprise guest looked at Hank like he was a piece of meat, something to be ripped into and devoured quickly. The thought made him hot under the collar, and he was _sure_ his face was red as a tomato. Hank was a lot of things—a man with his share of healthy appetites, for one—but the thought of taking advantage of someone in this position made his skin crawl. Even if the guy seemed to be really hoping he would.

“I have a dog,” Hank said preemptively, putting himself between the man and the door. “He gets excited, so… just stay back. He might jump on you.”

The man gave him a look, his head cocked and his handsome brow furrowed.

Hank sighed. He’d figure it out.

Sumo did try to jump on them both, several times, before Hank got him to settle down. The man didn’t seem to mind much. He sat on the floor, long legs spread out like a mile of pale skin, and held open his arms for Sumo to climb into his embrace.

“His name?” the man asked, rubbing his fingers through the dog’s fur reverently, as if he’d never felt anything like it.

Hank winced guiltily. “Sumo. I should have asked, you know my name and I don’t know yours.”

The man’s face fell, a little. “Can’t say it.”

“I mean, I might butcher it, but try me. I have to call you something.”

“No.”

That seemed to be the end of that.

Hank had very little in his fridge, so far as anything approaching a decent meal went, and even less he’d be willing to throw together for someone else. And then there was still the problem of clothes. The man wandering around his living room would never fit into anything Hank could offer, and even if he liked the idea of a wiry man hanging around in his hand-me-downs, it didn’t seem right. He’d have to go shopping.

“Fuck,” he said, half to himself. Louder, turning to look at the man over his shoulder, he added, “I’m going to have to go out.”

“I can... go too?”

That was the last thing Hank needed. “No,” he said. Pushing the fridge shut again, he walked to where the man stood by his bookshelf, an old paperback in his hand. Hank thought about putting it back, but he decided against it when he saw the title—a Hans Christian Andersen collection, something he’d read out of for Cole a long time ago. It touched something in his heart, seeing it in someone else’s grip. 

“No,” he said again, taking the man by the elbow and guiding him to the couch. “You just hang out here. I’ll be back, we just need food, and — pants. You’ve got your book, and…”

“What’s that?” the man asked, pointing at his television.

“Perfect. Yeah. TV.”

Hank reached for the remote and turned it on, pressing it into the man’s hands. He was an adult. Even if he somehow had made it to… whatever age he was without seeing a television, weren’t younger generations supposed to be able to intuit technology?

“Watch this til I come home,” Hank said. “I’ll—I don’t know, I’ll be back. Don’t go anywhere.”

Sumo came over and settled at the man’s feet, laying down with a few exaggerated groans. His new best friend fell for his sad old dog act immediately, reaching down to thumb over his ears. That seemed as good a reassurance as any that the man would stay put.

Hank lingered a bit, gathering together some reusable bags and waiting to see if either of them would think to get up and book it. Luckily, they seemed comfortable. The man watched the television like he’d never seen it before, intently focused. Sumo would be up on the couch as soon as Hank was outside, getting away with bad behavior, but Hank didn’t mind it much. He left feeling better than he had when he walked in the door—still confused, still a bit lost, but better.

Walking slowly up and down the aisles, throwing things in his cart without really looking at them, Hank only let himself think about his current situation for several minutes at a time. It was too much, the whole thing. Like a story in one of those crappy magazines, right next to a report on the latest sighting of Bat Boy. Maybe he was some kind of… Amish, Hank thought, holding up a pair of jeans and wishing he’d thought to ask after the guy’s size. Maybe he’d left an insular community and mostly spoke Pennsylvania Dutch. Whatever it was, he apparently trusted Hank. They felt bonded, somehow, whether it was through the rescue or something else. It was Hank’s responsibility to take care of him. At least until they found wherever it was he belonged.

That was his limit on thoughts about the near future. He had to think about tonight. The rest would come when it did.

Hank brought home mostly microwave meals and ingredients for the few recipes he reliably thought he could remember to cook. One bag had t-shirts, sweats, and the pair of jeans Hank hoped would fit. It had been two hours since he left, and he was almost afraid of what he’d find when he opened the front door. Chaos, maybe, or absolutely nothing if the guy had robbed him. Weird long game to play, but not impossible.

Instead, everything was as he’d left it. The man didn’t look like he’d moved an inch, although Sumo was sprawled out asleep with his head in the man’s lap. Long fingers stroked over the white line on Sumo’s forehead meditatively, one of the same spots Hank liked to pet when he was thinking.

Hank put the groceries away. He threw one of the frozen meals into the microwave, figuring nobody could turn down a lasagna, and set down the bag of clothes by the kitchen table. Under it all, the television hummed, quiet enough that Hank could tune it out.

“Hey,” he said, after the microwave beeped. “Food’s up in a few. Want me to bring it over there?”

The man didn’t respond. Hank wondered if that was due to his concentration or his strange grasp on English. Either way, he cut two generous squares off the lasagna and put them in bowls, bringing both to the couch. He held one in front of the man’s face, blocking his view of the television, and then set it down in his upturned hands.

“Connor,” the man said.

Hank blinked a few times. Glancing at the movie playing, some inscrutable thing that looked to be at least fifty years old, he pointed at the main character and said, “That his name?”

“His,” the man said, looking down at the bowl in his lap. “And mine. My name is Connor.”

Hank almost upended his bowl onto the rug.

“You _can_ speak English. What the fuck were you doing, talking like Tarzan?”

Poking at his fork with a finger like he didn’t know what to do with it, the man shrugged. “I didn’t know how to say it.”

“Say what?”

“The words. I knew them, but they were wrong.”

Hank dragged a hand down his face, scratching at his beard. This just got more and more bizarre every five minutes. “So where did you learn?”

The man—Connor, Hank reminded himself—put his hand on the book Hank had left him with. “I had… something like this. Electronic.”

“An e-reader?”

Connor smiled, crooked and a bit reticent. Nothing like his beaming face at the station. “Possibly. I learned to read, but never heard someone say the words. I didn’t want to look foolish.”

Hank needed a moment to process that. He lifted his fork and stuck a piece of lasagna in his mouth, immediately burning his tongue, but he blinked through the welling tears and pretended he hadn’t. Chewing slowly, he waited for Connor to take his own bite before he spoke. “You learn fast.”

“Yes,” Connor said. “I always have.”

He wasn’t eager to answer any more questions, even though somehow Hank had left and come back and he’d developed an entirely different vocabulary. He kept his attention on the television, thankfully, giving Hank a break from feeling scrutinized. When the movie was over, credits rolling, Hank made the mistake of reaching for Connor’s bowl to take it to the sink. That seemed to press the reset button. When he turned away from the sink, bowls full of water so they could “soak” overnight and the leftovers in the fridge, he found Connor’s gaze trained on him, roaming his body like… well. Like something.

Clearly, wherever Connor came from, it wasn’t rude to stare there.

“Well,” Hank said, a little too loudly, “I’ll make up the couch for you. I’d, uh, offer my bed—I mean, you know, without me in it, for you to sleep, but my sheets. My sheets aren’t clean. And I don’t want to run laundry at…” He checked the time on his phone. “Shit. I’ll get you some blankets.”

“Why can’t I sleep with you?” Connor asked.

Hank ignored the question. He retreated into his room, quickly, digging for spare blankets and grabbing an extra pillow off his bed — not the nicest for company, but it would do — and bringing them back out to dump on one end of the couch.

“Bathroom’s there,” he said, pointing at the door, “and, uh. You’ve got the TV. Clothes for you are in the bag there. Hope I guessed your size.”

Connor didn’t seem to care about any of that. He took a step closer, pushing himself into Hank’s space, and damn him, Hank froze up instead of backing away. He let Connor take his wrist, fingers following the grain of his body hair, and their chests were nearly brushing. Connor was almost his height.

He thought about all those things in what felt like a split second, just before those lips that had touched him _twice_ now, in very different circumstances, rested on the underside of his jaw.

“I want to stay,” he whispered, sending Hank’s heart into his stomach and his dick into the stratosphere.

“You can stay,” Hank said. His voice came out too gently, like something tender, so he cleared his throat and ducked away from Connor’s roaming hands. “Out here. Your own space.”

Connor frowned, that look of intensity coming back for a split second. Hank realized his mind must move very fast, practically lightspeed if he could figure out how to speak English in two hours, and that almost… frightened him. Not like he thought Connor might do something, but he’d never met anybody that smart before. It was heady, having all Connor’s focus turned to the apparent problem of getting in his pants.

Whatever went on in Connor’s head, he didn’t clue Hank in. Instead, he pulled back, even as he said, “You like me.”

Hank wondered what gave that away, the fact that he’d taken in a near stranger just because he’d been kissed on the mouth or the uncomfortable way his sweats were beginning to tighten. Not much, but he’d count on Connor to notice.

“Well,” Hank said, taking another step backward, “that’s different. I don’t know you.”

“You could,” Connor retorted.

He could. He’d enjoy that.

“Get some rest, Connor,” he said instead. “Tomorrow we’ll… fuck, I don’t know about tomorrow. Just get some rest.”

With that, he turned to his bedroom, whistling sharply for Sumo.

The dog stayed behind. Hank stewed on that betrayal as he settled into bed, squeezing his eyes shut and praying for the sweet embrace of oblivion. It was easier to be annoyed with Sumo than it was to think of the hunger evident in Connor’s face, the way he craved knowledge. How quickly he consumed it.

* * *

When Hank woke in the morning, he almost forgot the events of the night before. For a blissful moment, he laid in bed and kept his eyes shut, gently stretching his aching neck—and he remembered his missing pillow, and where he’d left it, and who was using it. He pictured it before he could stop himself, thinking of short brown curls tumbling over the off-white pillow case. Long legs stretched out under Hank’s ratty throw blanket.

Reaching up to dig the heels of his hands into his eyes, Hank decided he needed a shower. A cold shower.

Before he made his way to the bathroom, holding clean boxer shorts and a semi-fresh towel bunched up in one hand, he frowned at his rumpled bedding and thought again about Connor sleeping on the couch. Begrudgingly, he dragged the comforter off the bed and tugged the fitted sheet until it popped off the edge of his mattress. If he ran them through the washer now, he could throw them in the dryer before he left.

Outside his door, he nearly stepped on a lump of blankets.

“What the fuck,” he grunted, jumping backwards.

Brown hair poked through an opening in the blankets, quickly followed by Connor’s face. He looked surprisingly alert, wild-eyed like he was hunting for danger, until his gaze fixed on Hank.

“Oh,” he said, voice rough.

Hank felt his stomach turn over. Ignoring it, he leaned across the hallway and opened his bathroom door, throwing the towel and the boxers on the tile. “Why the hell are you down there?” he asked, turning back to the pile of sheets and gathering them up in his arms. “You all right?”

Connor watched him curiously, rubbing at his mouth. Hank heard his jaw crack on a yawn and winced sympathetically.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Connor said.

“You had the TV.”

“That occupied most of my time, yes. Eventually, I got tired… I didn’t think you’d mind.” He gestured at the door. “I didn’t come in.”

No, he hadn’t. Hank supposed he could at least appreciate that level of self-control. If he’d woken up with Connor squirming around his bed… well.

Reaching blindly for the door to the garage, Hank hefted the sheets into the washing machine. He slammed the door shut, spun the dial, and hit the start button in record time, not even bothering to flip the light on. “Well,” he said, coming back in, “you sound even better than you did last night. Sure you couldn’t speak English before?”

Connor shrugged as an answer. He smiled, though, and he looked so soft and so pathetic, leaning up against the wall outside Hank’s bedroom like a forlorn poodle. It was — cute, was the word he came up with, and he instantly hated it so much that he shut himself in the bathroom, forgetting that if he took a shower now the water would be freezing cold. He didn’t care. That was what he wanted, he told himself, teeth chattering as he gave everything a perfunctory once over. It was what he needed, to remember that he had _morals_ , goddamn it. The whole “born sexy yesterday” thing wouldn’t work on him.

It did, though. When he emerged, at least vaguely cleaner than he was when he went in, he spotted Connor in the middle of stripping, right in Hank’s living room, like it didn’t matter at all. Hank had seen it before, of course, but he still felt captivated by the expanse of Connor’s freckled skin, his torso bare as he looked over the shirts Hank had bought for him the night before. Hank felt warm, again, and dirty in ways he couldn’t scrub, and when Connor turned and caught him staring, he hurriedly shuffled into his bedroom to throw on his own clothes in peace.

“All right,” he said later, glancing at his phone. He was late, which he was trying to stop doing so much, but it couldn’t be helped. “I’ve got to go to work at the station. Stay here, okay? I don’t want to worry about you fucking off somewhere. There’s food in the freezer, just—read the instructions, I guess, you’re smart enough to figure it out.”

He hadn’t intended it as a compliment, but Connor preened just the same. It was stupidly charming, how he liked to be flattered, looked at, appreciated. Hank had never seen somebody pull off the whole “desperate for attention” thing without it being exhausting before.

“I can’t go with you?” Connor asked, even though he already seemed to know the answer. The jeans Hank had picked out were too small, apparently, so he’d stuck with the gym shorts and put on one of the t-shirts. He’d picked the vaporwave palm trees, which Hank had idly thought looked hideous before he threw it into the cart anyway. It annoyed him how the look suited Connor anyway.

“Nope,” Hank said, popping the ‘p.’ “No offense, kid, but I don’t know who you are, or where you’re from, or why you came looking for me. I’m not keeping you prisoner here, or whatever, but I don’t want to worry about you all day either.”

“That’s easy to answer,” Connor said, propping his chin up on one hand. “I wanted to see you again.”

Hank paused as he stuffed his wallet into a pocket. He needed to leave, but he didn’t want to waste one of the rare periods where Connor seemed willing to talk.

“Okay,” he said slowly. “So how long are you here?”

Connor’s gaze flicked out the window like he was checking a watch. “Six more days. Then the moon is full, and if I stay past then, I can’t go back.”

Hank made a face. He couldn’t help it, but he regretted it the instant Connor saw and his face fell, too, like he was irritated at not being believed. Lifting up his hands in surrender, he said, “Sorry, sorry. So, it’s like… what, does this have to do with immigration?”

It was too late. Connor had clammed up again, looking down at the kitchen table. Hank had just about given up and was ready to head out the door, giving Sumo a goodbye scratch, when Connor looked up again.

“Six days isn’t very many,” he said, softly. “Can I stay until then?”

There was too much talk of _staying_ for Hank to feel entirely comfortable, but he found it was incredibly difficult to say no to Connor when he looked at Hank like that. When he looked the way he did at all, actually. Hank had always been a little bit of a sucker for a sweet face, even if the mouth in that face was probably lying to him.

They were both crazy, Hank thought, picking up his car keys and spinning them around one finger.

“We’ll talk when I come back,” he said, meaning yes.

Connor understood. He smiled, eyes crinkling at the corners, and when Hank left, he had to fight off the urge to lean against his front door and put his hand to his heart, feeling it thrum against his ribs. The whole thing was unfair.

Jeff called Hank into his office as soon as he arrived, looking caught somewhere between amused and gravely serious. Once he was sure Hank was fine, and that he wasn’t getting any more of an explanation than he’d had yesterday, he threatened to put another disciplinary mark against Hank in the books for being late and turned him loose. Chris gave him a smile slightly more conspiratory than usual, and a few of the other officers did stupid things like wolf whistle when they saw him coming or ask “how was he?” After those initial outbursts, though, everyone went back to their own business and left Hank alone. He appreciated that and he didn’t, since it meant he had all the time in the world to worry about what Connor would get up to in his absence. Over lunch, he almost decided to hurry home and poke his head in, just to be sure, but he got busy in the evidence lockers and lost track of time.

It felt nice, he thought, turning onto his street at the end of a ten hour shift, to know he was coming home to someone.

Connor was fine. Sumo was fine, too, conked out in his dog bed and snoring like he’d been out for hours.

“We played with his ball,” Connor explained, touching the toy with his foot and pushing it across the floor. It was clearly covered in dried slobber and had dog hair stuck all over. “I’m afraid he ran into your bookshelf. I tried to put everything back.”

The titles did look mixed up, but Hank shrugged it off. “Long as he’s happy,” he said.

Connor asked a thousand questions about his day, what he did, whether it was anything like the police procedural he’d seen earlier. Hank answered as best he could, trying to slip in a few reciprocal questions to see if he could catch Connor off guard. He never did. Connor slipped out of them all, like a fish darting out of a net at the last second, and Hank was surprised to find that he didn’t really care. Things felt settled, now, and they had an end date—six days. Less than, even, by now.

He wondered if he’d miss Connor when he was gone. Probably. He was lonely most of the time, these days, and had been for a long time. Just because he’d gotten used to it didn’t mean that was what he preferred.

They had breakfast for dinner, two frying pans, two plates, and a pile of cooking implements joining the bowls still soaking in the sink. When Hank went to take his overshirt off and put on a pair of sweatpants, he remembered the bedding still waiting for him in the dryer, probably long since wrinkled. It took a few minutes for him to get it situated again, the fitted sheet giving him as much trouble as it always did, and by the time he looked up again, almost sweating, he found Connor standing in the doorway.

“What?” he asked, shaking a pillow down into its case.

It came out brusque, gruff, but that didn’t seem to deter Connor. He leaned against the doorframe, watching Hank work like he’d never seen someone make a bed before.

“Are you going to sleep?”

Hank threw the pillow against the headboard, not caring that it landed crooked. “Not yet.”

Connor hummed and left again, abandoning Hank to the task of getting his comforter back in place. It had a small wet patch at one corner, still, after running through the dry cycle and several hours to sit. He turned it so that the offending corner was at the bottom of the mattress.

“Here,” Connor said, surprising him. He had reappeared, carrying the pillow and blankets Hank gave to him the night before. “Do these go, too?”

Hank frowned. “You don’t want ‘em?”

Shrugging, Connor tipped his head toward Hank’s bed. “You said I couldn’t sleep here because the sheets weren’t clean. That’s what you did, isn’t it? Cleaned them?”

Oh, fuck. Connor had him there.

“Uh,” Hank said eloquently, “yeah.”

“Okay.”

Connor put his pillow on the bed next to Hank’s, neat and prim, and spread the first blanket out over Hank’s comforter. The weather had been hot and humid lately, and Hank had nothing but an ancient ceiling fan to chase the heatwave away, but he didn’t have the heart to tell Connor he’d be miserable under so many layers. Thankfully, Connor at least crossed the room to drop the second blanket on Hank’s armchair.

“Okay,” Hank echoed, edging his way toward the door. “Well, uh. Night.”

What he was going to do without a pillow on that couch, he didn’t know. He could at least grab the extra blanket, but Connor stood between it and him, raising an eyebrow. 

“Where are you going?” Without giving Hank a chance to answer, he added, “I want to sleep here.”

“Right.”

“But not without you.”

They were going to have to talk about boundaries again, Hank thought wildly, if they had actually talked about them at all. So far it just seemed to be Hank drawing a line and then trampling over it himself. Swallowing on reflex, he was surprised he didn’t gulp audibly, like a cartoon.

“Connor,” he said weakly, “I can’t share a bed with you.”

“Why not?”

Hank didn’t have an answer. He hoped the silence would speak for him, that Connor would let him slip out with his tail between his legs, but instead, they stood there in a stalemate. Connor was still wearing that stupid vaporwave tee, the colors garish and distracting, drawing Hank’s eye even as he tried to look anywhere else. He recognized that expression already, Connor’s concentration aimed squarely at him, but it seemed mixed with a sort of peevishness and impatience, like Hank was the one being unreasonable.

“I’m not stupid,” Connor said.

Hank hadn’t expected that.

“I don’t think you’re—”

“There are things I don’t know yet, and things I don’t understand, but I’m not like—” Connor paused, pursing his lips and apparently picking his words carefully. When he tried again, he seemed to have changed tack completely. “I wanted to see you,” he said again.

“Why?” Hank shook his head. “I appreciate what you did for me on the lake, kid, but it’s not like we talked. What could you possibly have wanted to come back and hunt me down for?”

Connor gave him a very obvious up and down, like that was the answer to his question. It probably was.

Hank scoffed. “That’s a lot of trouble to go to for some old man’s dick.”

“If it was,” Connor said, “it was my choice to make. If you didn’t want me, you could have chosen to throw me out.”

Hank’s resistance crumbled at that, a little. It was the ‘want’ that did it. Connor didn’t say it like he was just talking about the physical charge running between them like a live wire, he said it like he said _stay_. Like it meant something deeper, something more, something he felt unprepared to consider if he thought about it too hard. Standing on the edge of a precipice and looking down into a void.

Connor stepped forward and slowly extended his hand, taking Hank’s like he’d done in the water that night. He gave Hank every opportunity to turn him away, to tell him no, but he didn’t seem pleased by his passive acceptance, either. Squeezing his fingers, he drew closer still.

“I’ll stop,” he said, looking down at their joined hands. “I’ll go home, if that’s what you want.” When he glanced up again, his face was so near that he and Hank almost shared a breath. “But you like me.”

Hank did. He liked him so much, and was liking him more every moment they spent together, even though Connor baffled and scared him. It felt stupid to fight it any longer, with Connor right there, a consenting and willing partner, demanding to be acknowledged. Respected.

That void still yawed below him, but suddenly, it felt less intimidating. All Hank wanted to do was close his eyes and leap.

“Fuck,” he groaned, bringing up his free hand to set it along the sharp line of Connor’s jaw, his thumb landing square on Connor’s bottom lip.

Grinning, Connor said, “I like that word,” before he sucked Hank’s thumb into his mouth.

* * *

It took Connor over an hour to calm down enough to sleep. He wanted to put his mouth everywhere, which Hank learned quickly enough, and his curiosity extended to things Hank had never even considered. Nobody had ever tried to lick Hank’s armpit before, and he had to explain why that made him laugh rather than melt into Connor’s embrace. The first few times questing fingers had ducked into Hank’s sweats, seeking his dick, Hank tried to gently redirect Connor’s attention back to making out. He liked kissing, and so did Connor, but unsurprisingly, patience wasn’t his strong suit. He had Hank’s sweatpants halfway down his ass the third time before Hank took gentle hold of his wrists.

“Hey,” he said, gentling the reprimand with a brush of his open mouth against Connor’s. “Take it easy. We’ve got time.”

“No,” Connor said. Hank thought he was playing the brat at first, something that thrilled him more than it should have, but then Connor’s face crumpled a bit. “We don’t have enough.”

Hank let go of one wrist to stroke Connor’s back, a long slide of his palm against the lean, fine muscles there. “Six days.” He glanced at the clock on his bedside table. “Five. It’s not going anywhere.”

That settled the mood, enough that Hank could persuade Connor under the covers. With the lights off, it almost felt like seeing Connor emerge through the black water, shadows and vague shapes until he was too close to discern. It felt like there was something there, under the memory, just barely out of Hank’s reach—but Connor stole another kiss, chaste and yet simultaneously burdened with what felt like intense longing, and whatever it was slipped away again.

“Come here,” Hank whispered, drawing Connor into him. It felt nice to hold someone, to hold Connor, who seemed almost tentative before he wrapped an arm around Hank’s middle and squeezed so hard Hank thought his ribs might crack.

They fell asleep like that, pressed chest to chest. When Hank opened his eyes again, Connor was still clinging to him like a limpet, but somehow they’d gotten turned around in the night. He was pressed up close against Hank’s back, head nestled between Hank’s shoulder blades, his breath a gentle breeze. Hank allowed himself the duration of a long breath for a fragile, tender feeling, wondering at how he truly never thought he’d get to experience something like this again. Then he was grateful Connor had wriggled his way into being the big spoon. If he’d felt Hank’s morning wood, laying there with an almost frustratingly innocent air, Hank truly believed he’d have woken up dead.

It was a challenge getting through his morning routine. Now that he knew Hank wouldn’t turn him away, Connor sought every opportunity he had to demand a kiss, a touch, even grabbing for Hank’s ass while he made coffee. More than once, Hank thought about the PTO he still had, tempting him with a wide open day they could use to do nothing but kiss and touch and grab. He didn’t mention it to Connor, though, who already needed to be beaten off with a stick.

“Seriously,” he said, leaning away from Connor’s mouth as it followed him over the kitchen table, “we have to detach sometime.”

“No,” Connor replied. He sank his teeth into Hank’s lower lip for good measure.

Work was terrible. It was a quiet day, with no active investigations needing his input, so he spent it at his desk, getting distracted every five minutes or less thinking about Connor waiting for him at home. More than once, he lost track of time staring at his computer, hand on the mouse and doing absolutely nothing. He wished he’d gotten Connor some kind of burner so they could talk throughout the day—he missed him. He’d given up on questioning exactly why they felt so connected, and it would have been nice to hear from him every so often, or to send a semi-flirty “thinking about you.”

Of course, knowing what he did about Connor, there was a non-zero chance that Connor would just send him a dick pic. Probably several dick pics.

Hank excused himself to the restroom and splashed cold water on his face. A lot of cold water.

He only made it two days like that, pretending to care at his job and thinking only of Connor’s mouth on his. Connor seemed to spend his idle time thinking the same about Hank. As soon as he came home, Connor was on him, dragging Hank to the couch or to the bed to stick his tongue down his throat.

They still hadn’t… well. Hank wasn’t too old-fashioned, but he knew when the moment felt right. He hadn’t found it yet.

That didn’t stop Connor from trying.

“Hey,” Hank said preemptively, intercepting one of Connor’s hands as it made for his crotch, “what do you think about going somewhere?”

“We went somewhere last night,” Connor said. He sounded casual, like he didn’t have his other hand creeping up the underside of Hank’s shirt. As he pushed through the thicket of body hair and made a circle around Hank’s nipple, he added, “That was nice, though. Are we going back?”

They’d gone out to a clothing store after Hank got home, to fit Connor with something nice enough that they could keep the reservations Hank had made in a funky little restaurant downtown. It wasn’t his scene, at all, and he felt every bit his age when he walked in with Connor hanging off his arm, but they’d had a nice time.

Well, it had been a nice time until Connor’s lobster arrived and he took a bite right out of its back, shell and all, but they got past that hiccup fine.

Hank grunted as Connor pinched his chest. Not hard, but he still wasn’t used to having his tits played with. “We could, but I meant—hang on.”

With a gentle push, he sat Connor back so that he was resting on Hank’s knees, legs on either side. He looked pretty there, hair mussed and his lips already a bit redder than when they’d started.

“Can’t think with your hands all over me,” Hank explained, smoothing one thumb over Connor’s thigh just under the line of his shorts.

Connor shrugged, looking unconcerned. “I don’t want to think.”

“Yeah, I know what you want.” Hank patted at his leg and laughed. “I was thinking about where we met, at the lake. You live near there, right?”

Connor’s gaze dropped to rest somewhere around Hank’s navel, but there was none of his usual fire or interest there. “Sort of,” he said. “Yes.”

Hank shrugged off the vague phrasing. That was all he ever got, anyway. “Say we leave Sumo with his pet sitter and go back up there. Rent a little place and spend the rest of our time together, no distractions. No work.”

“You can do that?”

“I have some leave available, yeah. It’s only a few days.”

Connor frowned. He wrapped his fingers around Hank’s wrist, stopping the mindless movement of his thumb as it still swept back and forth.

“I don’t like to think about leaving,” he said, even as Hank wondered if he’d done something wrong by suggesting it. “I like Sumo, and your house. Your books.”

“Sure,” Hank said. He was a little disappointed, but... “We don’t have to. It’s just a thought.”

Connor looked relieved, but only temporarily. His expression dropped back into solemn contemplation too soon, Hank’s hand in his arresting grip as if he’d forgotten about it. Hank doubted that. Connor was purposeful, calculated, and thought about everything before he did it. It made everything feel weightier, like it mattered more. Like Hank mattered more, just by being here with him.

Eventually, Hank reminded himself, this would be over. He couldn’t get used to feeling like Connor fit.

“Okay,” Connor said suddenly.

“What?”

“Let’s go back to the lake. Tomorrow morning.”

Tomorrow. Jesus, that would be a quick turnaround.

“It’s gonna be hard to find a place that quick,” Hank said, checking the time on his phone. They had twelve hours or so, if they wanted to leave early. “And we’d have to pack, and call the pet sitter…”

Connor nodded like he understood. Then he slowly, purposefully moved Hank’s hand further up his leg, mouth opening on a silent sigh. Hank’s mouth opened, too, involuntarily.

“Can you?” he asked, sounding sincere.

Hank wondered if he was being manipulated or if Connor just liked to be touched, all the time, no matter what the circumstances were. Both were probably true.

“Yeah,” Hank said, croaking a little. Clearing his throat, he said again, “Yeah, I think we can do it.”

Connor sighed again, loud and heavy this time, and folded forward to wrap around Hank as best he could. Resting his chin on Hank’s shoulder, he touched his nose to the beard bristles growing stubbornly on Hank’s neck and squirmed a bit to make himself more comfortable. Hank moved the hand on Connor’s thigh to his back, holding his phone out awkwardly and squinting so he could see as he pulled up his contacts.

“Okay,” Connor said again, breathing it down Hank’s neck.

If Connor was in Hank’s way, and if Hank’s legs were very quickly falling asleep, he didn’t say. Putting the phone to his ear, he said, “Three days, right?”

“Yeah,” Connor murmured. He burrowed in closer. “Three.”

* * *

Hank’s old clunker had them at the lakefront cottage by noon. Burdened with nothing but bags packed lightly and some supplies Hank nabbed at a gas station halfway up, they made their way to the front door where Hank punched in the keycode. The place was more than a little rundown, but with Connor apparently unwittingly pressing in closer to Hank, boxing him in and practically breathing down his neck, it didn’t matter much to Hank.

“Here,” he said, handing Connor the ancient backpack he’d shoved some clothes into, “would you throw this in the bedroom upstairs? I’m gonna check everything out.”

Connor had been nervous in the car. He fidgeted terribly, tapping his fingers against his knees and making discontented noises until Hank lost a little bit of his patience and handed Connor a quarter to keep him occupied. To Hank’s surprise, he’d played with that dexterously, and when he got tired of coin tricks he’d settled for rubbing it with a thumb, like a worry stone. It was impossible to tell what exactly had him on edge, and Hank hadn’t really wanted to ask.

They came here to be close, but it felt good to take a few breaths alone.

Stepping outside through a door in the kitchen, Hank took note of the ramshackle personal dock and the dinghy attached, bobbing peacefully in the waves. It had a name on the side, painted on by inexpert hands and mostly worn away with time. All that was left read “SON,” in bold letters. Hank could almost find that funny.

He put his hands on the railing, looking out over the lake. Storm clouds were receding, blowing their way somewhere else, but the sky hadn’t quite given up on being gloomy. He liked the look of it. Somehow, a perfect day wouldn’t have suited the mood.

Hank had to head up the stairs to find Connor again, where he was sitting on the bed and gazing out the window. The mattress was too small, probably a full, and their things sat on the floor, half spilling out of the bags, but none of that mattered. He looked at Connor, instead, taking in the way he leaned toward the window like he wanted to fall out and into the horizon. There was a naked yearning in his bearing, even as he hunched his shoulders and shrank slightly into himself.

Connor looked lost. Hank felt his heart give a lurch at the thought, wanting nothing more than to take him in hand and guide him back home.

Instead, he rapped a knuckle on the doorframe.

“Kind of a shithole,” he said, grinning when Connor turned to look at him over his shoulder. “But I’ve been in worse shitholes.”

Connor huffed and pulled up his legs onto the mattress. When Hank stepped closer, he rose to his knees and leaned in for a kiss.

He was trembling.

“Sweetheart,” Hank said before he could stop himself, cupping Connor’s jaw with both hands. “What’s wrong?”

Connor shook his head and closed his eyes, probably so that Hank wouldn’t see the tears welling up. It was too late for that. They squeezed out from between his lids, tracking down one cheek. “I can’t tell you.”

Hank brushed the tear away. “You can. It’s—Connor, we don’t have to do anything. Let’s go out. Find someplace to eat, or, I don’t know, see a movie.”

Connor froze, his whole body going stiff. Pulling back, he gave Hank one of the dirtiest looks he thought he’d ever seen. He felt his own temper flare a little in response, but he quickly reined in the knee-jerk reaction and let Connor go, taking a step away from the bed.

“I told you,” Connor said, “I know what I want. You can’t act like I don’t.”

“Well what am I supposed to think?” Hank asked, throwing his hands in the air. “It would make sense for you to have second thoughts, after I bring you out here, expecting—well, you know!”

“To fuck me,” Connor said, spitting the word with vehemence he had to have learned from Hank. “You can’t treat me like a child, either.”

“Okay, yeah, let’s talk about that. How old _are_ you?”

Connor looked down at the floor, practically burning a hole in the wood with his eyes. He gave his answer through a clenched jaw and gritted teeth.

“I don’t know exactly.”

“Jesus Christ,” Hank groaned, rolling his eyes. “And you can’t tell me where you’re from.”

“No.”

“Or why you have to leave.”

“No!”

“Then what the fuck do you want with me? You saved my life, Connor, but you’ve seen it. You’re not gonna get much return on that investment.”

Somehow, Connor made angrily clambering off the bed look almost graceful. He rose to his full height when he stood, tilting his chin up, and Hank was surprised again by how their eyes met, nearly dead on. Glare for glare, they were on equal footing —and he remembered how strong Connor was, how he’d lifted him out of the water without much effort, and what it felt like to have all those muscles flexing under the heft of his body.

Connor must have seen the argument dissipating, lost like dark liquid in black water. His face twitched briefly into a sneer, there and gone again, before he visibly tried to school himself into something more neutral. It only partially succeeded.

“Would you still want me,” he said slowly, deliberately, “after the six days were up?”

Hank blinked. “What kind of question is that?”

“It’s my question. What if I had robbed a bank, and I was hiding from the police? Would you want me then? Or,” he said, “if I told you I had left an entire life behind me with no remorse, no regret, just to find you?”

That, Hank felt sure, was the closest Connor had come to the truth the entire time they’d known each other.

“What if,” Connor said, in a quiet, earnest voice, “it turned out I wasn’t who you thought. Would you still want me?” He gave Hank’s wrist a squeeze as he brushed past him, walking toward the door.

Hank couldn’t turn to watch him go, unseeing eyes turned toward the window, but he heard Connor stop.

“I like you, Hank. I want to be with you, but… Just think about it.”

With that, Hank heard the stairs creak, and Connor was gone. He didn’t go far—Hank heard the radio click on and fill the cottage with a low buzzing hum—but even before the noise downstairs settled, Hank knew he had his answer. All those things Connor said, the questions Hank had, they should have mattered. He should care whether Connor’s on the run or done something illegal, and he should wonder why there are strange gaps in Connor’s knowledge when he was clearly so incredibly smart.

The problem was, what Hank did know mattered so much more. Connor _was_ smart. He was strange, but kind and thoughtful, and not only had he saved Hank’s life out there on the lake, he had made it better. Maybe Hank was thinking with his dick, and things would change once they’d fucked and gotten it out of their systems, but… he didn’t think so. Connor liked him. He liked Connor. Somehow, he didn’t think that would change.

Most importantly, his entire body ached at the thought of letting him go.

His stupid pride kept him from going crawling back. Instead, he took Connor’s place on the bed and stared at the window, turning his decision over and over in his mind like his own worry stone. Nothing about it changed. It ran like a loop, _I care for him, I want him, I’ll lose him_ , over and over, until he couldn’t say how long he’d been sitting there. It was a mistake to give in, he knew… and yet, it was his mistake to make.

When he got up to head downstairs, still not sure what he would say, he found Connor in the doorway again. They gaped at each other, both somehow caught in the act, until Connor pointed down at the bag from the gas station.

“I wanted a granola bar,” he said.

Hank snorted. Climbing back onto the bed and leaning against the headboard, he patted the mattress next to him. It would be a tight squeeze, but they could do it.

“I’m sorry,” he said, watching Connor cross the room like a flighty deer waiting for a chance to bolt.

‘Me too,” Connor said. He put one knee on the bed, slinking down until his leg brushed up against Hank’s. “I… Hank, I want to answer your questions. I want to be completely honest. It’s just…”

“Hey,” Hank said, nudging Connor’s side with an elbow, “I get it. Being vulnerable sucks.”

Smiling, a little, Connor nodded. “I don’t want to ruin this, either. I want this.”

“I know. I’m sorry I keep fussing.”

Connor shrugged, his arm brushing against Hank’s.

“I want it, too,” Hank added. “I just… kept thinking something would hit like a lightning strike and say, this is it. This is when you go for it.”

“Oh,” Connor said. He slipped down a little, body listing ever so slightly so that he was leaning into Hank. “I felt it.”

“Yeah? When?”

Dropping his head on Hank’s shoulder, Connor sighed. Hank felt it more than he heard it, and lifted an arm to wrap around Connor and tug him in closer.

“That first night,” he said, like it was the simplest thing in the world. “I knew then. I had to go for it.”

There wasn’t much Hank could say to follow that up.

When he took Connor’s chin gently in hand and turned his head to kiss him, it felt right. It felt better still when Connor took this as tacit permission to run wild and flung a leg over Hank’s, settling into his lap and grinding down against his crotch.

“I’ll tell you everything,” Connor said, whispering it in Hank’s ear as he rolled his hips like a wave crashing against the shore. “Tomorrow. I promise.”

Hank didn’t care. Whatever it was, he didn’t care at all.

He just wanted.

This time, he didn’t stop Connor when his fingers fumbled at the button on Hank’s jeans. He helped shuck his own pants down, kicking them away as Connor pulled at the neck of his shirt and threw it in the same direction. His cheeks and ears were flushed, moles and freckles dotted everywhere like flecks off a painter’s brush. Hank reached out and flattened his palm against Connor’s collarbone, feeling the heat under Connor’s skin for a lingering second before he dragged it down and felt each muscle as it passed.

Hank’s first impression was right. Connor was the most beautiful man he’d ever seen.

He told him so, quietly, in a way that should have been prettier. Connor deserved poetry, and whatever else he wanted, but he didn’t seem to need it. Instead, just that simple admission was enough for him to lean into Hank’s hands, lips parting, romantic and soft where Hank had thought this might be quick and borderline feral. That would have been good, too, he thought, but this… this was what he’d hoped for. Something that meant something.

Hank walked Connor vaguely through what he liked when Connor put his mouth on Hank’s dick, only because Connor couldn’t be deterred from that for long, and stopped him again about a minute in to pull his boxers off properly and retrieve the lube and condoms he’d bought at the gas station.

“I’m not gonna last like that, honey,” he said, throwing the stuff on the mattress and taking Connor’s chin in his hand. “If you want it, I’d rather make my one shot count.”

Connor snorted.

“Hey,” Hank laughed, getting to his knees on the bed and urging Connor backwards, “that was not intended. What kind of books have you been reading?”

“Educational ones,” Connor said. He playfully swung his leg up over Hank’s hip, bringing them together in a touch so good it bordered on painful. Letting out a choked gasp, Connor blindly grabbed for the lube and pressed it into Hank’s hands. “I want it. Please, Hank. Don’t make me ask again.”

“Have you…” Hank cleared his throat, running his thumbnail in the crease between the closed lid and the bottle. “Have you done this? I don’t care what the answer is, I just want to know.”

Connor shook his head. There was no shame in it, or even any hesitation. “I’ve done things,” he said. “But not this.”

Hank nodded. Slow and steady it was.

The sun set as they worked their way through stretching Connor open, taking time to enjoy how wound up Connor got just from Hank’s fingers pressing inside him. The intimacy of it wasn’t lost on Hank. It was practically golden hour, colors spreading across the clouds and casting the bedroom in hues of pinks and yellows and slowly spreading blue. He might have thought it was cheesy, if someone told him about it later—fucking your partner at sunset in a cottage by the beach, for Christ’s sake—but he couldn’t think too hard about it when Connor sweat and swore and lifted his hips under him. Bringing one hand to Connor’s cock, Hank gave him a few strokes, just to coax him a little harder, just to hear the sound he made.

They didn’t have to talk about what position they wanted. Hank wanted to see Connor’s face, and Connor reached up and grabbed the back of Hank’s neck like he’d kill him if he tried to turn away. Carefully, Hank moved his legs under the backs of Connor’s, maneuvering him into his lap, and lined himself up.

“Connor,” Hank said quietly, just to say it.

It wasn’t as slow as Hank thought. They’d done a thorough job, helped along by the fact that Connor had _really_ liked being fingered, and he was no wilting flower about it. Connor wanted everything Hank had to give, every inch, and soon enough he was grabbing and pulling at the meat of Hank’s ass, trying to encourage him to move faster. To go deeper. Hank found a rhythm, bent over Connor with his elbows supporting his weight, working up a sweat himself and feeling his heart pound like it had never worked harder once before in his life.

“Fuck,” he groaned, unable to keep his mouth shut any longer. He’d always liked to talk during sex. “You’re doing—so good.”

Connor whined at that. _Whined_. Hank felt his hips stutter, momentarily breaking his rhythm before he found it again.

Hank didn’t know how long they lasted. Connor came after several solid strokes that hit him right where it counted, squeezing his eyes shut and letting out a cry so loud Hank would have expected the neighbors at home to call the police. Hank whispered nonsense into his ear as he came down, petting him with long, flat-handed strokes until he stirred and wrapped his arms tight around Hank’s torso.

“Keep going,” he said, even as Hank felt his legs trembling.

It was hard to keep track of Connor’s hands after that. They roamed everywhere, manhandling Hank in a way he never would have found sexy before Connor walked into his life. It was like he was trying to memorize his shape, as if he might recreate it later just from how it felt in his hands.

Eventually, though, when Hank was starting to feel himself unravel, he felt one of those hands creep between where they pressed together, groin to groin and skin to skin. Hank stilled on instinct, halfway outside of Connor’s body, looking down at Connor’s long, slender fingers as they reached.

Connor touched him—touched them both, right at the place where they joined together. He wrapped his fingers loosely around what he could reach of Hank’s dick, feeling the seam between their skin, and his eyes. His eyes were bottomless, a never-ending well of what Hank thought might be love, and even as he knew how insane that was, he felt himself diving in.

“Oh, shit,” he gasped, curling into himself as he rocketed into climax faster than he’d expected, hitting him like a punch in the gut and leaving him winded. He collapsed onto Connor, who folded himself flat and welcomed him gladly, clinging like he never wanted Hank to move again.

That might have been nice, truthfully. Hank liked that Connor didn’t tell him he was too heavy, or try to roll him off before he felt quite finished having several consecutive heart attacks.

Still, eventually Connor’s semen drying between them got to be too gross to handle. That, and Hank was starving.

Grunting, Hank lifted himself onto his elbows and knees, dropping haphazard kisses along the column of Connor’s neck as he rose.

“No,” Connor groaned, slinging his arms around Hank’s shoulders and dragging him back down with considerable strength.

“Yes,” Hank said. He glanced out the window. “We’ve got to figure out food. See if some place is still open for groceries.”

“Not to be dramatic,” Connor said, letting Hank go and throwing an arm across his forehead, “but I would rather starve.”

Hank leaned in close and pressed his mouth to Connor’s ear, scratching his beard deliberately on the side of Connor’s cheek. “Could I tempt you with a second round after we get back?”

Connor’s gaze noticeably dropped down to look at Hank’s dick. Not even being subtle anymore. “Can you?”

“I don’t know if I’ve got another one in me,” Hank admitted, “but my tongue and my fingers work just fine.”

Connor scrambled out of bed, barely giving him enough time to finish talking. Hank laughed, and it felt good, it felt _great_. He felt happy.

Even as his smile lingered, watching Connor wipe himself down with his discarded shirt and pick out a clean one, he wondered what would ruin it this time, and when.

* * *

Hank woke up that night alone. He put out his hand to the other side of the bed and felt it was empty, eyes snapping open. The indent was still there, and the sheets weren’t cold—sitting up, Hank checked to see if the bag Connor had packed with what little he owned was still there.

He saw it, laying where they’d left it, just as his ears picked up the sound of pipes clunking and water running. Sinking back into the mattress, he covered his eyes with the heels of his hands and let out a shaky breath, telling himself to calm down. They still had… however long it was, now. Two days.

Maybe he could convince Connor to stay, he thought, dropping his arms at his sides. It was unbelievably stupid to tie up his life in somebody after knowing them less than a week. At this point, though, it was easy to dismiss that as a problem. Every aspect of this was unusual, and Hank couldn’t say he’d heard weirder “how we met” stories, but he’d heard some doozies.

There was still the matter of whatever Connor wanted to tell him. That loomed a little heavy on the horizon, but sex-sleepy and still fresh off the realization that they had something really good going for them, he figured they’d cross that bridge when they got there. He might ask then, once everything was out in the open, to see if Connor wanted to come back home after all. It would be empty without him—and maybe they could get him some ID, find him something to do so he didn’t just sit at home and wait for Hank all day. Connor was _so_ smart. He could do whatever he wanted.

Hank rolled over and reached for his phone on the floor, just barely out of reach, plugged into the only outlet in the room. It was late enough to be early morning, but still too soon to be awake.

Making all sorts of awful old man noises, he pushed himself into a seated position and put his feet on the floor, stretching wide and listening to his bones creak. The water had stopped, but distantly, Hank could still hear small splashes and a soft little sound like Connor was crooning a song to himself. His voice was off-key, and it was either too quiet to hear properly or in a language Hank couldn’t understand, but it was sweet. He wanted to see it for himself, to stand in the doorway and look at Connor until he’d had his fill. He wanted to sink into the tub behind him, even if it was a miniscule old-fashioned thing they’d certainly break.

He paused to pull on his boxer shorts as he walked out into the little hallway, not much more than the top of the stairs, a nine square foot landing, and the doors to the bedroom and bathroom. Putting a hand to the door, he found it unlocked and even slightly ajar.

“Hi, baby,” he said as he pushed it open, not wanting to scare Connor. “Thought I heard you—”

At first, he thought it might be some kind of prank. Connor sat in the tub, pale faced, mouth open and looking mortified. He was too tall for it, long arms and torso mostly sticking out of the water, and at the other end, draped over the porcelain was... a tail. Hank recognized it instantly as a mermaid tail, like something out of the movies, long and forked at the bottom into two fins. He recognized the colors, too, from when his dad used to take him fishing years and years ago. They were muted, nothing like the bright, tropical colors he might have pictured if asked what he thought a mermaid should look like, and the pattern reminded him of a yellow perch.

A ridiculously large yellow perch, somehow grafted onto the end of Connor’s body. Where there had _definitely_ been legs, no less than a few hours ago.

Connor grabbed for the lip of the tub, hoisting himself bodily up with just his arms. The water splashed over onto the floor, running down the length of his fucking _tail_. It stopped at the hips, just the way mermaid tails were supposed to, and Hank was alarmed to see that _any_ trace of his human lower half seemed to be gone.

He took a step backward.

“Hank,” Connor said, still holding himself up and looking around the bathroom floor frantically. “Hank, wait, please—”

His hand slipped. With a loud thud, he went tumbling onto the tile, landing hard on one side with a wince and a hiss of pain. His tail—his _fucking_ tail—flapped helplessly on the floor, making a wet slapping noise. Hank bent to help him on instinct, afraid he’d hurt himself, but Connor lifted himself off the ground and stared up at Hank, desperation naked on his face. That made him freeze again. He felt like a butterfly, pinned in place.

“Don’t run,” Connor said, reaching overhead to grab for the hanging towel. He began dabbing at the wet scales, like he was trying to mop up a spill. “Don’t run, I can explain—”

Hank didn’t run. He turned and walked away on unsteady legs, feeling himself move and shake like he was an entirely different person, piloting from the outside. Connor kept talking, kept pleading, but he heard none of it as he tugged on his pants, his shirt, and his shoes. Then he went downstairs, clinging to the railing like it was the only thing keeping him from collapsing and falling, like Connor had.

Without his input, he found himself outside on the personal dock, looking out at the lake where he’d almost drowned a month ago. Lifting a trembling hand to his mouth, he almost wished he hadn’t given up smoking. Of all the times to need one, this was a big one.

Hank’s gaze fell on the old dinghy roped to the dock, bobbing there innocently as the waves beat inward steadily. He hadn’t looked closely at it earlier, but there was a note in the kitchen explaining that it was still in good enough condition to take out on the water. There were life vests somewhere, too, but he discarded that idea just after it crossed his mind. He needed to get away, to find some distance, to go _out_ , like that first night. Like when he’d nearly died, drinking himself stupid in a shitty boat, thinking about Cole.

He couldn’t think about Cole. He couldn’t think about Connor. Not right now.

Mind made up, he crossed the dock and climbed into the dinghy, pulling out the little paddles resting in the bottom and setting them across his knees. The knot gave him trouble, with the way his hands were still quivering slightly, but soon enough they were both free. He paddled out into open water, eyes on the horizon, the sounds of the lake echoing between his ears until all he heard was a roar of white noise.

He didn’t know how far he’d gotten when a shout cut through the static in his brain, making him turn and look over his shoulder. Connor stood there on the dock, a distant white figure, flesh-colored sticks poking out beneath whatever it was he was wearing. Hank buried his face in his hands, wondering if he was going insane.

“Maybe it’s a dream,” he said to himself. He felt the hard wood under his ass, the chill in the air as wind rushed over the surface of the lake, but it would be nice if it was true.

When Hank turned back to look again, Connor was gone, but he saw something moving under the water. He hadn’t even heard the splash—and he remembered that first night again, the shape under his boat, too big to be any fish Hank had ever caught.

He was prepared for Connor to emerge, his head poking up on the left side of Hank’s dinghy. He wasn’t prepared for how hurt Connor still looked, and how angry, eyes narrowed and dark like storm clouds.

“I said I would explain,” Connor said, putting a hand on the dinghy so Hank couldn’t row away from him. “You won’t even listen? After everything?”

He sounded the same. What Hank could see of his top half looked the same, even as Hank was sure that tail churned around beneath the surface, keeping his shoulders just barely above water.

That _fucking tail_.

“I thought maybe you were in a cult,” Hank said. “Or you’d escaped from somebody trying to hurt you. I thought, _maybe_ , a _normal_ secret would be having a wife and kids in some foreign country who you never wanted to see again.”

Connor dipped down until his mouth and nose were underwater for a moment, brows furrowed. His face was wet, whether with angry tears or the lake, Hank couldn’t tell.

“You thought I was human,” he said.

“Well, yeah!” Hank shouted. “What else was I supposed to think? And what the hell did you think you were going to tell me in the morning?”

“About this! Everything!”

“Everything,” Hank echoed. “And I wasn’t going to think you were lying? That you were making up some bullshit to get away from me?”

Connor grabbed the side of the dinghy with both hands, giving it a shake. Hank tipped to one side and grabbed at the seat, water slopping over the edge and getting his tennis shoes wet. “No, you asshole,” he said, fingers so tight against the wood that Hank thought he heard it crack. “I promised.”

They stared at each other in silence.

Connor was still beautiful. Maybe more so, now, since he was clearly in his element. There was something wild about him like this, in a kind of full glory, the way he was meant to be seen.

Hank felt his resolve breaking, cracks splintering through the initial shock and upset. He always seemed to be giving in, when it came to Connor.

“All right,” he said, folding his arms over his knees and leaning forward. “Give me the sales pitch. Tell me what the fuck is going on.”

Connor shook the boat again, but before Hank could complain, he hefted himself up and over the side, landing with a thump and sending it rocking. He was wearing one of Hank’s button up shirts and nothing else, something that under different circumstances would have made Hank incredibly excited. His tail almost ended up in Hank’s lap, but Connor purposefully held it out of the way until he could drape it comfortably without needing to touch each other. That hurt Hank’s heart, a little. He missed the easy intimacy already, wishing he could soothe the wrinkle between Connor’s eyebrows away, but this wasn’t the time to be sending mixed messages.

“My family lives here,” Connor said. He pointed at the water, as if to illustrate, _down there_.

“I thought mermaids live in the ocean,” Hank said.

Connor shrugged. “Doesn’t this lake lead back to the ocean?”

“Geography’s not my strong point, but… eventually, yeah. If you went the long way around.”

“Maybe my ancestors migrated inland. We’ve been in these waters as long as anyone can remember. Do _you_ know every detail of how you got here?”

Hank lifted his hands in surrender.

“Anyway,” Connor said, resting his hands in his lap against the drying scales, “we aren’t supposed to come up too close to the surface. Too many people. I’ve been doing it anyway since I was little.”

“Why?”

“I liked to look. To see what people do. A few years ago, someone dropped something off a speedboat. It must have been waterproof, because by the time I got to it in the shallower parts of the lakebed, it still worked. You called it an e-reader.”

Hank shook his head. “Holy shit. So you taught yourself to read?”

“Eventually.” Connor smiled. It was a shadow of his usual bright ones, crooked and a little forced, but it still warmed a spot in the pit of Hank’s stomach to see it. “I got farther and farther away from home, and went back less and less. I was finding a place to rest when I swam under your boat.” He winced. “I’m more careful than that, usually, but it was dark. I wasn’t thinking.”

They didn’t need to go over the next part of the story. Hank still remembered it, Connor’s pale skin emerging from the murk and gloom like a beacon. An angel.

A mermaid. Equally as unreal, and yet here they were.

“Explain the legs,” Hank said. “I saw you on that beach. You had legs.”

“I don’t know how it works,” Connor said. “Once my tail dries out, it changes to human legs. When I’m submerged in water, they change back. It’s always worked that way. You’ll see it yourself soon.”

“Sounds like magic,” Hank grunted.

Connor shook his head. “It’s my biology. I can’t explain it, but I know that it happens. I don’t think you’d fare much better if I asked exactly how each of your glands works.”

“It isn’t the same, Connor.”

“It is, though, Hank.” Connor leaned forward. Tentatively, he extended his hand, and when he wasn’t rebuffed he set it on Hank’s knee. It left a damp patch in the jeans. “Just because you didn’t know I existed doesn’t mean that I somehow exist less than you do.”

Hank sighed, covering Connor’s hand with his own. There was the smile he liked best, a real one, splitting across Connor’s face like he couldn’t help it. Like he loved him.

That raised another question, one of the worst ones. It took him a minute to figure out exactly what he wanted to say, but Connor waited patiently, looking out over the water like he could see into the depths below.

“You came and found me.” Hank said. He ran a thumb over the back of Connor’s hand. “I still don’t understand that. Why me?”

“I like humans,” Connor said, flexing his fingers against Hank’s knee. “Your lives are so complex, so varied. You go anywhere, do anything, you have more control and more choices. My life was simple. No one wanted anything more, or even dared to think about it. You… caught my attention.” He chuckled. “If you hadn’t lost your wallet, I would have had to let you go, but you became a sort of fixation. You represented what I wanted.”

Hank winced, and tried to cover it up. Connor must have spotted it anyway. Shuffling closer, the cold slick of his tail brushing up against the side of Hank’s leg, he reached for Hank’s face with his free hand.

“You were handsome,” he said. “And you were different. And the more I learned about you, the more I liked you.” 

Stretching a bit farther, he kissed Hank’s cheekbone, a quick chaste press that made Hank wrinkle his nose. He felt his lip twitch up into his own smile.

“That,” Connor added, leaning back, “and you have a dog. I like dogs, too.”

Hank thought of Sumo, and then of his house in Detroit, and he thought again with a pang about going back without Connor. “Do you really only have two days?”

“Yes,” Connor said. His face fell, and he looked back out at the water. “I’ve been keeping track of how long I’ve been gone. If I don’t leave in two days, I won’t make it back before our rules say I’ve left my family for good. They won’t let me rejoin them, and then I’ll be alone. We don’t survive very long on our own.”

Hank hummed. “Do you love them?”

Sighing, Connor lifted his tail and checked it over. It was a deflection, an easy way for him to avoid meeting Hank’s eyes.

“No,” he said, and Hank knew it was the truth. “I know how that makes me sound, but I don’t. I didn’t belong there, and I still don’t. I just don’t want to die.”

“If you didn’t go back…”

Connor opened his mouth to protest, but Hank squeezed the hand still resting on his knee to silence him.

“If you stayed with me. Would you be giving up… this?”

He gestured at the tail. It looked different now, actually, not quite withered but definitely less smooth and colorful. More like skin than scales.

Connor gently took Hank’s chin in hand, drawing his attention away from whatever process—biological or magical—was happening. “I can’t change who I am,” he said softly. “I’ll always be like this. But I can change how and where I live. I can choose, but you’ll have to choose, too. We don’t know each other very well, Hank.”

Hank burst out laughing at that, a sharp retort of sound escaping across the water. There was no one to hear them, or to see, thank god, but Connor grinned and moved the hand on Hank’s chin to rest over his mouth. Gently, teasingly, Hank bit at Connor’s fingers until he pulled them away.

“No,” he agreed, shifting to pull Connor closer. They couldn’t quite get him in Hank’s lap, but close enough for him to hold was good enough. “But we could learn.”

Connor’s eyes fluttered shut. Hank saw his expression crumple for an instant before Connor pulled him in for a kiss, and he shut his eyes without thinking, opening his mouth and letting Connor take the lead. If Hank felt wetness on Connor’s cheeks, he blamed a sudden, very specific sprinkle of rain. He wouldn’t tell.

“Yeah,” Connor breathed, right into Hank’s mouth before he buried his face in the crook of Hank’s neck. “I’d like that.”

Hank’s hand swept down over his wet shirt on Connor’s body, from just under Connor’s armpit, over his ribs, and—carefully—down to his hip. To his surprise, he reached the hemline and found only more smooth skin there, the same he’d explored earlier that night, and when he looked, the tail was gone completely. In its place were two legs, moles in all the same places.

“Oh,” Connor said, pulling back to look down. “See, I told you.”

“I didn’t see it,” Hank said, playfully slapping Connor’s flank just to make him laugh and squirm. “You’re gonna have to show me again.”

“I can do that.”

Connor wrapped his arms around Hank’s middle. Hank thought it was a hug and returned the embrace, sighing into it and feeling his body relax, but he felt Connor tense far too late. The next thing he knew, they were both rolling over the boat and into the water, tipping the whole thing sideways.

When he opened his eyes, straining to see, Hank caught a glimpse of Connor’s smile, almost sharklike, and his tail back in place like it had always been there.

“You fuck,” he gasped when he broke the surface, trying not to laugh while water was threatening to splash up into his mouth. 

He couldn’t say whether Connor had heard him, but a pair of wiry arms wound around him again, a wet body pressed to his own, chest to back, and a familiar voice he was coming to love whispered right into his ear.

“Don’t worry, Hank,” Connor said. “I’ve got you.”

He did, Hank thought, relaxing into his grip and letting Connor keep them both afloat.

“Yeah,” he said, tipping his head back to look up at the sky. “I know.”

**Author's Note:**

> Find me at [beepgrandchero](https://twitter.com/beepgrandchero) on twitter!


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